Phil! Gold :: Video_Games

Mon, 07 Mar 2005

Grandia Xtreme

Well, it's certainly not Grandia II. Grandia Xtreme took Grandia II's
excellent battle system and improved on it. Unfortunately, that's the
only thing it improved on. The plot is simplistic, the characters are
unbelievable, the dialog is crappy, and the voice acting (with the
possible exception of Kroitz, voiced by Mark Hamil) is horrid.

The main character is Evann, a Ranger with the ability to travel via
Geo Stream. This allows you to teleport deep into various dungeons,
after you've visited the destination the hard way, of course. In what
appears to be an attempt to make the game longer, at various plot
points the Geo Streams get reset and you have to go back through the
areas if you want to reopen them. (Note that doing this is completely
optional, for plot purposes at least. But really, you don't want to
play this game for the plot.)

And then there are the corridors. At various points of the game, you
must go through randomly-generated areas. Presumably the random
generation is to enhance replay value. I found it annoying.

There are parts I liked. Junctioning eggs was fun for a while. Magic
is contained within magic eggs; in order to cast a particular set of
spells, you must have an egg that provides those spells equipped. You
find eggs with only the barest minimal spells. You may then, however,
junction them in pairs to get better eggs. Different combinations
give different results, and the really powerful eggs are,
understandably, difficult to create. (I ended up taking a chart of
combinations out of a FAQ and writing a Perl script to list optimal
recipes.)

I'll complain about the ending after the spoiler barrier. Just note
that if you do stay with the game long enough to beat it, you should
wait through the end of the credits, as with any console RPG, really.

Ultimately, I really can't recommend playing this game unless you're
much more interested in gameplay than story, characterization, voice
acting, and dialog.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

Summary: good gameplay and game mechanics, sometimes-annoying interface,
silly plot.

I played and loved Final Fantasy Tactics for the Playstation. So much so,
in fact, that FFTA was the main reason I went out and got a Game Boy
Advance. (And that ownership of a GBA and FFTA is what has kept me from
reading anything, which is why the site hasn't been updated as much.) So
it is that I kept comparing FFTA to FFT. And while FFTA is a good game,
there were things I liked better about FFT. But I'll get to those.

So, gameplay/game mechanics. As with FFT, most of your time in the game
is spent doing battles on isometric grids. Most aspects of the game
revolve around these battles in one way or another. The overall mechanics
of the battles are pretty much the same as in FFT, though it seems that
many of the calculations are much simpler in FFTA. For example, the
success rate of most things (physical attacks, ranged attacks, spells,
etc.) seems solely dependent on the target's evade score and which way
they're facing relative to the attacker. (Yep, even spells are more
likely to hit if the target can't see you.) No additional considerations
of zodiac/sex compatibility, Brave or Faith, mitigating abilities,
relative differences in speed, or different calculations for different
sorts of attacks. All abilities that reduce the effectiveness of attacks
(such as Reflex, which is pretty much the equivalent of Blade Grasp)
simply reduce the chance of the attack hitting to zero (compare to Blade
Grasp, which reduced it to a small percentage based on your Brave). This
leads to silly things like enemies walking up and hitting you, even
knowing that they'll miss.

The changes to the job system are interesting. There are again job
classes, but there are also five races. Different races have different
available jobs, with only a few jobs being available to multiple races.
Different races also have different strengths, so, for example, a Nu Mou
mage will generally be better at it than a Moogle mage. Job abilities are
also learned a little differently. In a manner similar to Final Fantasy
9, pieces of equipment provide the user with abilities for his or her
class. Each ability has an Ability Point cost; once the user has earned
that many AP toward the ability, he or she has mastered it and will always
have it available to be equipped. This means that it's much more
advantageous, especially early in the game, to have your characters
rotating through their various classes, so they can continue learning
things.

Many familiar classes have returned, including White, Black, Blue, Red,
and Time Mages, Summoner, Archer, Thief, and Ninja. Some new ones have
been added, such as Hunter (cross an Archer with a Mediator), Sniper (an
advanced Archer with a little Ninja in them), Assassin (just fun),
Illusionist (spells that target every enemy on the map; fun, but not as
much so as FFT's Calculator), Gadgeteer (abilities that randomly hit all
allies or all enemies), and others. (What, you thought I'd list them
all?)

FFTA takes a slightly different approach to specialist classes than did
FFT. In FFT, there were characters that had their own, unique, classes
in place of the normal base class, Squire. (And Ramza got extra abilities
as a Squire that no one else got.) These characters were often useful for
their special abilities, but they could otherwise progress normally
through the job hierarchy (sometimes with amusing results, like the
dancing Agrias). In FFTA, there are no player-controlled characters with
special abilities during the normal course of the game. Marche and
Montblanc are the only special character, in that they don't change their
appearance depending on their job class, but they each have exactly the
same classes available to any other member of their respective races.
After you beat the game other special characters can join your clan. At
least one (only one so far for me) is a special class, but he comes with
all of his abilities mastered, he cannot learn new abilities (there aren't
any items that can provide them), and he cannot change jobs. All of which
combine to make him pretty useless, especially since his unique abilities
aren't special enough to warrant putting him in a battle where I could use
someone more flexible.

Experience gained works pretty much the same as FFT. AP (the FFTA
equivalent of Job Points) are earned only at the end of a battle, and
everyone involved in the battle gains the same, fixed amount. You can also
do things in battle that earn Judge Points (thanks, Square, for changing
the meaning of "JP"), which are used for combos (someone uses the Combo
command to initiate a combo on an enemy, everyone else with a combo range
that includes that enemy joins in, and the resulting damage is much more
than the sum of their regular attacks) and totema (race-specific summons
that hit the entire battlefield; the only requirements for a totema are
that you've unlocked it and have 10 JP).

Sorry. I'll try to cut back on the parenthetical comments.

I mentioned Judge Points, which, by their name, imply the existence of
judges. A big departure from FFT is the addition of laws. In any battle,
there is a set of laws governing the engagement and a judge to enforce
them. Each law has two parts; something that's forbidden and something
that's recommended. There's tremendous variety in each: weapon types,
abilities for a particular job, abilities from several different jobs,
specific colored magic, any colored magic, any non-colored magic
(e.g. time magic), anything that targets the whole battlefield, anything
that targets an area, damage to a particular race, damage to animals,
specific status ailments, any status ailments, specific elements, specific
status enhancements, doing the same thing as the last unit that took a
turn, and so on. If you do something that's recommended, you get one
judge point. Killing someone also gains a JP, though each character can
gain a maximum of one JP per turn. If you do something that's forbidden,
the judge gives you a card. It's usually a yellow card, which is a
warning, but if you've already gotten a yellow card or if it's a
high-ranked law, you get a red card and the offending character is
immediately removed from battle and sent to jail. In addition, breaking a
law subjects the violator to a fine after the battle. Depending on the
severity of the law, the fine could be anything from forgoing the monetary
reward for that battle to a permanent reduction in one of the character's
stats. At the beginning of the game, there's only one law per battle. As
things progress, that number increases to three, which gets very annoying.

The gameplay is less linear than FFT's. You can go to a pub in any town
and get a list of missions available. Some are dispatch missions, which
work like the missions in FFT (except that character levels and abilities
actually have bearing on their success this time around), while others are
battle missions; you accept the mission, travel to the appropriate place,
and fight whoever's there. Some of the missions advance the plot when
completed; you do eventually get to the end of the game.

Which brings me to the plot. Anyone expecting a plot as intricate as
FFT's will be disappointed. The basic premise is that kids from the
modern world are suddenly transported into a magical world that appears to
be based on a computer game some of them have played, named "Final
Fantasy". The characterization isn't too bad, but some of the characters
(most notably, the main character) are annoying. The main character,
Marche, ends up bent on destroying the magical world so he can go home.
Upon being confronted with arguments like, "I like it here, and if you
destroy this world all of these people who are here will die," his
response is, "This is all wrong and I want to go home." Fortunately,
you'll spend much more time in battles than in worrying about the plot.

While the plot was my main complaint about the game, I have a number of
issues with the game's interface. Many things have been carried over from
FFT, and I felt that, by and large, the designers did a good job of
compensating for the fact that the GBA has fewer controls than a
Playstation controller. I did still occasionally miss the ability to
rotate and tilt the map, but the designers did a good designing the maps
so they didn't need to be moved around to see almost everything.

FFT also used the cells on the map grid to more effect than FFTA does.
During many commands, FFT colored the squares under characters to indicate
whether they were friend or foe. In FFTA, ally and enemy classes are
colored slightly differently (so a friendly assassin looks a little
different than an enemy one), but it's a subtle difference and take more
time to learn. FFT also showed the area of effect of abilities. You'd
pick an ability, it would show you the range of that ability, you picked a
square as the target, it showed you the area that the ability would
affect. In FFTA, you see the range, but when you pick a target it only
shows you what units will be hit by the ability; you don't get to see the
ability's full range. This is somewhat simplified by the fact that all
area-effect abilities are a simple plus sign around the target square, but
you still have to know the the ability is an area-effect one, which (as
far as I could tell) cannot be learned except by trial and error. There
were a couple of "Target Area Forbidden" laws I violated because I didn't
actually realize that it was an area-targeting ability.

In general, the descriptions on a lot of abilities were lacking. In FFT,
you could see the range, area, height tolerance, and elemental attributes
of any ability (assuming they applied). FFTA shows almost none of those.
Ranged weapons indicate their range, but spells and abilities don't.
Nothing mentions area or height tolerance, and elements are only mentioned
haphazardly. On at least one occasion, I violated a law forbidding a
particular element because I didn't realize the ability had that element
(the Illusionist ability Star Cross is Holy elemental; based on that, I
suspect that Stardust is Dark elemental).

Both FFT and FFTA have the property that obstacles (buildings, trees,
other people, etc.) can block missile weapons. (And arrows can be arced
over some obstacles, but bullets cannot.) If something blocks the path in
FFT, the game shows the success percentage as 0%. FFTA has no such
luxury; the shot will still be blocked, but you can't tell that it will be.

Because of the nature of learning abilities and the fact that all action
abilities are learned from weapons, I ended up with a lot of weapons. It
took a significant amount of time to scroll through the entire list and
finding particular weapons was somewhat daunting. (Though not too hard,
really, thanks to automatic sorting of the list.) This is really a minor
complaint, since there's really no way to avoid it and the interface does
a good job of compensating.

Final stats. At the time I beat the game:

I'd spent just over 71 hours of gametime

There were 12 people in my clan (of which there were about 8 I used
regularly)

Marche was the highest-level character, at level 34

I had roughly 1.4 million gil

One character had mastered a class (Black Mage)

I had completed 243 missions

Note that the game continues after you beat it. You can save game clear
data to your save game and things continue after that. I'm still working
on this part, but there seems to be a little more plot and there are
actually other characters that have joined my clan.

Overall, I'm very happy with the game. It works very well on a GBA and
has provided me with many hours of gaming fun. I wish the plot had been
better, if not as good as FFT, but it's a good game despite that.

Postscript: There's lots more that I'd like to mention, like the ability
to change equipment, abilities, and jobs while placing people onto the
battlefield; the fact that you can see the battlefield before placing
people; the obtaining and placing of lands that works so much like Legend
of Mana; and a bunch of other things that I wanted to put in, but this
will do for now.

Skillchains

There are so many descriptions of skillchains in Final Fantasy XI, and
none of them really made sense to me for the longest time. Through the
help of a
skillchain
discussion and two
skillchaincharts, I finally
made sense of it all. This is an explanation of that understanding;
hopefully others will benefit from it.

Skillchains are the result of doing weapon skills in a particular order,
with precise timing. They unleash a significant amount of additional
damage. [There appear to be rough calculations on how much, but I can't
find reliable numbers.] There are three levels of skillchains--the higher
levels do more damage. Every skillchain has at least one elemental
component--if a mage casts an elementally-appropriate spell at the same
time that the skillchain occurs, you also get a magic burst for more
additional damage.

Let's start with level 1 skillchains. There are eight types of level 1
skillchains: Transfixion, Liquefaction, Impaction, Detonation,
Compression, Scission, Reverberation, and Induration. I don't beleve that
there's anything inherent in most of those names; they're just what
they're called. Almost every weaponskill has at least one of those types
as an attribute. There are certain pairings of attributes that will
create a skillchain. See the chart at right for a graphical layout. From
that chart, you can see that, for example, Impaction leads to
Liquefaction. Thus, you can create a level one skillchain by chaining
together, say, Flat Blade and Burning Blade, in that order. The
skillchain created is named after the attributes of the final weaponskill,
so this example would make a Liquefaction skillchain.

The items in the graph are also color coded to indicate their elemental
attributes: Transfixion is Light, Liquefaction is Fire, Impaction is
Lightning, Detonation is Wind, Compression is Dark, Scission is Earth,
Reverberation is Water, and Induration is Ice. The above example is
Liquefaction, so you could magic burst with any Fire spell.

Finally, some weaponskills have multiple skillchain attributes. For each
skill there's an order of priority. An example is Spinning Axe, which
has, in order, Liquefaction, Scission, and Impaction. If you have two
weaponskills with multiple attributes, the first skillchain's priorities
are more important. Let's chain Spinning Axe with Shadow of Death, which
is Induration and Reverberation. The first priorities of each weaponskill
are checked first, but there's no Liquefaction -> Induration
skillchain. So the game goes down the list of the second weaponskill,
trying Liquefaction -> Reverberation. Nothing. Now it goes to
Scission on Spinning Axe and starts over with Shadow of Death, checking
Induration. There are no Scission -> Induration chains, so it next
checks Scission -> Reverberation. That is valid, so the two will form
a Reverberation skillchain.

Skillchains themselves can be chained. You can go Scission ->
Reverberation -> Induration, which will make a Reverberation skillchain
followed by an Induration skillchain. When you do this, the damage
multipliers are higher; the Induration skillchain would do more damage
than if it had been created separately.

That covers level 1 skillchains, and is really most of the hard stuff.
Now we go on to level 2.

Level 2 skillchains are more powerful than level 1 skillchains. In
addition, each level 2 skillchain has two elemental attributes; you can
magic burst with either of those elements. The level 2 skillchains are:
Distortion (Water and Ice), Fusion (Fire and Light), Fragmentation
(Lightning and Wind), and Gravitation (Darkness and Earth). You can see
the paths to make level 2 skillchains in the graph on the right. Since
the graph is not entirely clear, let me clarify a bit. Certain
combinations of level 1 skillchain attributes will make a level 2
skillchain: Liquefaction -> Impaction creates a Fusion skillchain.
Also, some of the highest-level weaponskills have level 2 attributes;
Swift Blade, for example, has Gravitation. You can put together level 2
attribute to make a level 2 skillchain in a manner analogous to the level
1 skillchains. Fusion -> Gravitation will make a Gravitation
skillchain.

As with the level 1s, you can hook together multiple level 2 skillchains.
You can do things like Liquefaction -> Impaction -> Gravitation,
which will make a Fusion skillchain followed by a Gravitation skillchain.

Finally, there are the level 3 skillchains. There are only two of these,
and each has four elemental attributes. Light skillchains are Light,
Fire, Lightning, and Wind, while Dark skillchains are Darkness, Earth,
Water, and Ice. Level 3 skillchains can only be made by putting together
two level 2 attributes, as illustrated by the chart on the right. Note
that these are essentially pairings; the same two level 2 attributes will
give the same results regardless of the order in which they are executed.
Since at least one of the weaponskills in a level 3 skillchain must have a
level 2 attribute, these are restricted to the highest-level characters in
the game. The earliest that these weaponskills come available is at level
65, and some classes don't get them until 67 or so.

The usual rules of chaining apply; you can make, for example, a light
skillchain with the sequence Liquefaction -> Impaction ->
Fragmentation, which will first make a Fusion skillchain followed by a
Dark skillchain.

Insofar as anyone knows, there are no level 4 skillchains. Following the
logic from lower levels, there would only be one level 4 skillchain, and
it would have all elemental attributes. It would be made by putting
together a Dark type and a Light type weaponskill (possibly in the other
order). It would require weaponskills that had Dark and Light type
attributes, which none seem to. In short, not only do they not exist, as
far as anyone can tell, they cannot exist in the game as it
currently is.

For your edification, here's a full chart of the links to form the various
skillchains:

I don't know of any complete, up-to-date list in English of weapon skills
and their skillchain attributes.

The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages

Oracle of Ages is one of a pair of Game Boy Color games. The other is
Oracle of Seasons; each can be the sequel to the other, depending on which
you play first. I started with Oracle of Ages, finished it, and got a
password to enter into Oracle of Seasons. When I did so, I got a
continuation of the story as the introduction to Oracle of Seasons.
Apparently, there will be several points where people will give me
passwords to transfer back and forth between the games, to synchronize my
actions between the two. It's an interesting system.

Gameplay-wise, Oracle of Ages is much like the other Zelda games I've
played (Zeldas I, II, and III). From what I've read, it has more in
common with the N64 Zelda games, in terms of puzzle solving and so on,
while Oracle of Seasons is more old-school. I suppose I'll see.

There were a lot of puzzles to solve, and a number of the bosses were more
puzzle-based than skill-based. Many were of the "hit it with a sword and
don't get hit yourself" variety, though.

One big complaint I had was that the format of the game didn't really lend
itself well to the Game Boy format, mostly with respect to saving. Saving
worked like the console Zelda games I've played--if you save within a
dungeon, when you restore, you start back at the beginning of the dungeon.
Actually, it was worse than other games, because if you saved in the
overworld, when you restored you'd be back at whatever point you entered
the overworld, which could suck if you'd spent some time working to a
particular area. The specific reason that this is bad is that the Game
Boy is a portable system--there are many cases where you might need to
save and exit it quickly. I play primarily on the bus and train, and I
have to stop when it gets to my stop. That sometimes meant losing some of
the progress I'd made.

Oracle of Ages also contained my first real exposure to Zelda's trading
games. My roommate informs me that they've been doing this a lot in more
recent games, but I don't remember much along those lines from the earlier
games. In order to get the Master Sword, you have to run all over the
world trading key items for other key items in sometimes bizarre ways.
Get old mail from someone or other. Give the mail to someone in the
toilet and receive a stinky bag. Give stinky bag to someone with a stuffy
nose and get something else. And so on. I did have to resort to a FAQ
for a couple of the trades, sadly.

So it was a reasonably fun game, but with parts that marred the
experience, especially on a Game Boy.

Grandia II

Let's see... It's a console (Dreamcast) role playing game, one of my
most-preferred genres. While the gameplay is rather overly linear, the
battle system is at least interesting, and the characters and plot
development are both excellent.

Linear gameplay, yes. There's pretty much none of the wandering off to do
side quests that other console RPGs have, nor is there much real exploring
to do. You'll see pretty much everything in the game because you have to
go through it to progress. There are branchings in the paths available,
but almost without fail, one branch is a dead end resulting in some
treasure while the other proceeds onward.

I won't describe the battle system; there are certainly enough other
places that do. Suffice it to say that it has an interesting design that
I found useful and reasonably fun, both of which are important in a
console RPG.

Ah, the characters. Ryudo is the main character, and he's got an
attitude. He's not shy about letting people know exactly what he thinks,
and he generally put things in amusing (if not necessarily so to the
recipient) ways. I've a host of screenshots of amusing dialog, including
stuff like, "Well, I guess you'd better get back to praying with yourself,"
and, "I'm sorry. Were you waiting for me to give a damn?" Many of the
other central characters are equally good. Milennia is a very fun (and
cute) embodiment of evil; Elena is probably the blandest, though still
likeable; and Mareg's blending of rough demeanor with verbose eloquence is
usually interesting. The only one I didn't really like was Roan, mostly
because I found him rather annoying.

There is also a host of minor characters, most of which you don't even
have to interact with (villagers, onlookers, etc.) Nevertheless, the game
designers wrote several different dialogues for each one. Unlike many
console RPGs I've played, it takes a number of conversations with someone
before you've exhausted their dialog, and this is true for everyone you
meet in the game.

And the plot. I'll try not to spoil anything until I get below the
spoiler barrier. The initial presentation seems simple enough: ages ago,
there was a battle between Darkness and Light. Light won, but only sealed
away the Darkness. Now the Darkness is gathering again, and the heroes
must gather the power of the Light to stop it. (Even if Ryudo despises
the church and is only doing it because they're paying him a lot.) As
things progress, however, the plot takes a number of rather unexpected
twists, some of them rather unconventional for a console RPG. I played
through the last eight or so hours of the game continually expecting that
I was just about to the end.

All in all, a very worthwhile game, and one I am immensely glad to have
played.

Kingdom Hearts

I approached this game with some trepidation, for as much as I like
Square, I hate Disney. (I won't go into deep reasons for either of those
here. Suffice that the feelings exist.) As such, I refused to buy it,
because money would make its way from that sale to Disney. I ended up
playing a copy owned by a friend of a friend.

Said playing only annoyed me further, because it's a good game. Square
made a good game, and Disney did its best with its characters. So we went
and visited Halloween Town and Hundred Acre Wood and many other places
where the lands and characters were exactly as Disney had made them. (For
good or ill; Pooh was as lovable as he has been with Disney, and Tarzan
was as annoying as Disney has made him.)

There are plenty of side quests in addition to the main events. You can
search out all 101 dalmations, lost among the various worlds; find all of
the (often hidden) trinity points to gain treasures and unique items;
fight wave after wave of enemies in the Coliseum; spend time building a
spaceship to fly around in (which is solely for fun--there's no
bearing this has on anything else in the game); and several other things I
can't think of right now.

The plot is decent. Honestly, it's nothing really extraordinary, but it
was interesting and I've seen much worse.

And then there's Donald and Goofy. You play Sora, a young boy who lost
his friends when his world vanished. You have to have Goofy and Donald
with you as you travel around. These two are some of the most annoying
traveling companions I've run across. Of the pair, Goofy's actually the
intelligent one, which doesn't stop Donald from shooting his mouth off
every chance he gets. And they're largely useless in battle. They tend
to flail away at enemies, doing useless amounts of damage until Sora
walks over to actually kill the thing. Donald likes to cast magic spells,
occasionally to useful effect. And if you ever want to get rid of any
items, like potions or megalixirs, just give them to Donald. Apparently,
to his AI, "only use items in an emergency" means "please use up all of
your items as quickly as possible".

One of my favorite sounds is the "wawawawawa" sound Donald makes when an
enemy hits him.

So there's a lot of good stuff about this game, and it's a worthwhile one
to play. But, even aside from my dislike of Disney, I wouldn't go out of
my way to get it. Borrow it from a friend or wait a while and pick it up
from some store's used games bin.